The number one cause of death for almost all companies is simply that they don’t sell enough.
In the same way, according to expert consultant Thomas Hogg, 90% of problems in a company are fixed in the same way: with more customers and sales.
That is why many entrepreneurs are interested in how to increase their income and some are surprised when I say that, in reality, there are only some basic ways to increase income in a company.
The basic ways to increase the income of a company
Getting more new customers. This is obvious and, many times, the most expensive path, although it is also the most followed by almost everyone. More ads are put out, more calls are made, etc.
Getting to increase the average value of the purchase of our customers. In other words, customers spend more on each transaction they make with us. If instead of an average purchase of 10 euros per customer, this purchase rises to 12, we will have increased revenue by 20%.
Getting the customers we already have to buy from us more often. In other words, if they make us one purchase per month, getting them to make two purchases each time would double sales without the need to get new customers.
Basically, everything we can do to increase our income can fall into one of those 3 categories.
Therefore, today we are going to see a great list of 25 actions, framed in each of these three basic strategies, that a company can carry out to increase its income.
And we are going to see them with real examples and success stories of those who applied them.
This is probably the most extensive material in Resources for SMEs and also one of the most important and practical, so I recommend that you keep it as a guide, print it, and work on it to sell more.
Way number 1 to Increase Revenue: Get More New Customers
This is the first way to increase the income that comes to mind for every entrepreneur. The concept, in theory, is simple: more people come to us and buy from us.
And this is also the great touchstone of most entrepreneurs because, for most companies, there are not enough people right now who walk through the door or call them on the phone. It’s something they tell me over and over again when I ask them, their main problem is that potential clients don’t arrive, new blood.
So how do we get those new customers?
- Increasing the amount of Marketing and promotion
Today, there is no other way. When you ask me how do you get customers, the answer is always the same:
Through promotional actions, that is marketing campaigns.
You have to go to where the client is and you have to do it actively, show them something that interests them, convince them that we are their best option, and close the deal.
If we increase the number of ads, do more campaigns, more calls, send more emails or pick up the phone more often, more customers will come. It is that “simple” and at the same time that difficult because it involves facing a lot of refusals and rejections.
Now most companies don’t do this, even though you intuitively know you must. Most companies do not carry out enough marketing campaigns, in a generalized and systematic way.
almost always with everything, in theory, we know that we have to choose the salad from the menu, but …
There are several reasons why an entrepreneur doesn’t do all the marketing they should:
In marketing, you miss more than you get right. It is the nature of the game, you have to be systematic and constantly testing and collecting data. Many do not make that effort and all the marketing is reduced to fragmented actions.
We have a fear of picking up that phone and being told no, of doing another marketing campaign and losing money instead of making it. That is, there are psychological reasons, such as that fear of rejection or loss.
Who would have guessed it, but many companies, more than an expert in marketing campaigns, need a psychologist who breaks those barriers of fear.
- Increasing the effectiveness of Marketing and promotion
We can run a campaign, for example, email marketing, and get 4% of people to respond. But if we manage to get a 12% response in that same campaign instead of 4%, that means that, with the same money and effort, we have achieved 300% more interested parties or leads.
What is the main way to increase marketing effectiveness?
Learn best practices and how others did it.
In the same way, learn about marketing and persuasion in general, or about the specific type of campaign we want to do (for example, if we are going to do pay-per-click marketing, we study how the best do it).
Let’s take a look at the numbers from this test email marketing campaign to a small list of users. As we can see, 3.82% clicked interested in the proposal.
Let’s now look at a campaign, to the same list of users (plus some that were added in the days between the campaigns) that used the best practices of email marketing.
As we can see, there are almost 400% more interested parties, even when the openings remained similar or even lower.
That is the power of good marketing.
With the same users, the same marketing strategy, and the same effort, the results are much better.